Ottawa is prepared to send up to $74 million in funding to support small modular reactor development in Saskatchewan.
SaskPower has said a decision on whether to build a modular reactor is expected to be made in six years.
Ottawa is prepared to send up to $74 million in funding to support small modular reactor development in Saskatchewan.
SaskPower has said a decision on whether to build a modular reactor is expected to be made in six years.
Ottawa is prepared to send us the money now but SaskPower won’t even make a decision for 6 YEARS?! WTF SaskPower?! Why on Earth is it going to take you 6 years just to decide whether you want to or not? No wonder we can’t be bothered to agree to Net Zero if it takes you 6 years for a yes or no question.
This development, if it comes to be, likely will the largest in the history of SaskPower. Numerous studies need to be completed in order to even determine the project is feasible. Locations need to be evaluated, and each one needs public consultation, environmental studies, grid connection studies, archeological review, land acquisition planning, construction planning, among many other things.
Sure, it’s a yes or no question, but you’d better be damn sure of the outcome when hundreds of millions of dollars are resting on that decision.
Then why not phrase it more like “SaskPower is currently performing an assessment on the suitability of the SMR, and will know more by xxxx”?
Though if they say No, what are we going to do? Continue to use our aging coal and natural gas infrastructure until the world burns? Oh wait… we’re governed by the Sask party… That’s exactly what will happen.
SaskPower does say that on their website and it should be obvious that there is a significant planning process conducted before the decision to proceed is made at each stage of any major project.
Real answer? SaskPower is going to do whatever they can to avoid nuclear power. They’re not working in a vacuum. They’ve seen the project delays and massive cost over-runs in other jurisdiction and don’t want any part of it.
They might not eventually have a choice, but by that time some of these small reactor projects may have a track record.
By the time the “viable” option has a “track record” will be too late. We have to get off fossil fuels far sooner than that. But our Sask party government are the ones who aren’t interested in pushing the timeline.
Politically, it’s better if they just leave it ambiguous.
SaskPower took a pasting for the $1.5B fiasco that was the CCS project at Boundary Dam. It was late, over-budget and so far underperforming, to put it charitably. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that it has essentially doubled the cost of electricity generated by Unit 3, the only unit currently running with the CCS system.
It also added about 25MW of parasitic load to what is a small unit (~140MW). At the time of construction (2009-2013), the napkin math suggested that they could have installed somewhere around 300MW (nameplate) of wind for that amount of money, while hugely reducing overhead costs. Costs for wind and solar have both dropped enormously since then.
Senior management, even those friendly with the SaskParty, are pretty reluctant to be on the bleeding edge again. On the plus side, some fairly large wind projects have come online already, bringing them up close to 700MW of wind capacity.